Of Pearls and Tears
by Caty Jane
Summary: Naley; When tragedy strikes Haley and her family, will Nathan be able to help her? Or will something he's done in his past continue to haunt them as they try to move on?
1. Chapter 1

I don't own OTH...but I wish...

My hands shook as my stiff fingers tried to unclasp my grandmother's pearls from my throat. After many minutes of effort in vain, my tired hands gave up and moved instead to smooth my dark hair from my face. I sighed and my eyes shut of their own accord as I felt, rather than heard, my husband come into the bedroom. Without a word, his hands moved my hair to one side and unclasped the pearl necklace. The white beads slipped from their place on my neck and he put out a hand to catch them. He reached around to place the necklace behind me, then placed his hands on my shoulders, turning me so I faced him squarely. He forced my chin up so my swollen eyes locked into his own. His searching gaze asked questions I did not want to answer. Instead, I turned in his grasp so my back was to him.

"Will you unzip my dress?" I asked, cringing as I heard my voice shake and break. Starting again, I said, "Unzip me, please."

"Don't you want to go to your aunt's house?" he asked, fingering a stray piece of my hair.

"No." I paused. "No, I can't go back there. Just unzip my dress."

"It might be good to be around family right now. Maybe seeing your aunt would help."

I was as desperate to get my black, mournful dress off as if it burned the skin it touched. Tugging at it, I choked out, "I can't go back there, I can't. I just have to get this dress off. I have to get it off. I just-I just-"

The words suffocated me and I pushed my fingers to my forehead, trying to push away the faint feeling that had begun to overwhelm my senses.

"Okay, alright," my husband soothed. "Turn back around so I can," he said, since I had moved to lean against the dresser. I complied, and felt his deep sigh blow my hair a bit as he moved his fingers to touch the zipper. "Okay," he repeated, speaking as he would to a child. He ran his hand through his hair. "People are just worried about you. Everyone just wants to help."

"Well, they can't, can they?" I spit out, snapping to face him again although my zipper still had not been undone. I ran my bandaged hand over my worn face. "No one can make me feel better about what happened. No one can make me feel better about what I did."

Quick to jump to my defense, my husband disagreed. "You didn't do anything," his voice raised itself to emphasize his point. But I wouldn't have any of it. So when he tried to say that it wasn't my fault, what happened, I yelled back.

"Don't!" I closed my eyes. "Don't. Don't you dare tell me what is and is not my fault. You will never know the guilt I feel."

"You are not to blame for what happened," he firmly stated, grabbing my upper arms with his hard hands. "You should not feel guilty. You have no reason to feel any guilt."

I lashed out, pushing his grip and his body away from mine. "But you don't know, do you? It wasn't your father, was it? Was it the only family _you_ had left? No. You weren't the reason your father-" The words choked me. Putting my hand up to my mouth, I pushed back a sob. "He was driving _me_. _I_ was the one fighting with him again. I distracted him and its my fault he's dead."

I lifted my eyes up to his gaze, daring him to contradict me again. I felt tears making salty tracks down my cheeks and I swiped angrily at them.

Wordlessly, my husband turned me so my back was to him again. He slowly pulled down the zipper of the dress that I had worn to my father's funeral and then moved toward the door. As the dress pooled to the floor, he turned to glance at me.

"I'm your family. You still have me." He walked out the door and let me collapse onto our bed and cry.


	2. Of Rain and Remembering

A/N: Thanks for all the wonderful reviews! They're really appreciated! I hope you all enjoy this next installment! Please read and review!!

Of Rain and Remembering

The next thing I remembered was shooting up in my bed, tears on my face. Nathan lay next to me, and at my sudden movements, awoke. I looked down and saw that I was in his old college shirt and it was dark outside. I must have fallen asleep and he put me in it.

"Hey," I heard him say softly. "You okay?"

I nodded as I moved my body to hug my knees. Before I knew what was happening, tears were rushing down my cheeks, trying to keep up with my emotions.

"Hey, hey," Nathan said in that same, soothing tone as he shifted to put his arms around me.

I shook my head, trying to shake off my raw, broken feelings, but shaking off Nathan instead. I immediately felt guilty when a glance to his face showed his hurt look. So when he asked if I wanted to go to the kitchen for some water, I nodded.

I let him lead the way out of our room. I moved to settle myself into the soft cushions of our couch and my eyes followed his form as he came from the kitchen, carrying a glass of water with him. He set it down on the table before me and turned his body to face me.

His dark eyes probed my face for any sign that I would speak to him. When he found none, he sighed, rubbing his hands tiredly over his face. His hands reached out to grasp mine, but I tensed and moved instead.

"Talk to me," he pled. "We can make it through this."

"I don't see how," I said dully, feeling nothing but emptiness at his sad look. I don't see how I'll ever be able to forgive myself. I don't see how I'll ever be able to forgive you."

He nodded slowly, not wanting me to say more, but now that I started, I felt the emptiness consume me. I wanted him to hurt the way I was hurting. I wanted him to feel what I felt.

"If it wasn't for you, I wouldn't have needed my dad to pick me up, and we wouldn't have been fighting and we never would have gotten into that accident." I shot up from my seat and looked pointedly at him. "I want you to go. I don't want you in my house."

"This is my house, too, and I'm not leaving. We are going to work this out, Hales. We have to."

"You're right, this is your house." I walked to the door and slipped my feet into my shoes. I grabbed a coat to go over my t-shirt. "I'll leave."

"You can't leave, it's pouring rain outside!"

"Well I can't stay here!" I needed to get out of the house. Although it was dark, and cold, and raining, he let me go, knowing that nothing he could say would stop me, would make it better. He knew that nothing he could do would erase what he had done. And so he watched me walk out of our home and into the rain and into the cold. He watched me go.

An hour later, he found me. He had walked to the site of my accident and my father's death and found me standing, unmoving and unmoved in the rain. I was cold and shaking but I did not cry. My tears could not compare with the torrent of rain and therefore did not try. We stood there together for a few minutes and watched the rain's tears try to clear the skid marks left on the road from the car accident that killed my father. Then, unspeaking, we turned and walked home.

For three days I did not speak and he did not make me. I did not cry and I did not eat and I did not sleep and I did not stay in our room. Rather, I could not do any of these things. I could not sleep, so instead graded papers from the class I taught and cleaned the house, scrubbing the floor as if I was scrubbing at my guilt. I acted as though I was in a trance, and felt stuck in the way I was acting. I thought about nothing, or my father, and saw no one else, heard no one else, not even my husband.

On the third day he came in from work and took my hands in his. At the first human contact I had had in days, I jumped, shocked from my stupor. He had not touched me since that night and now my surprise was evident. I ripped myself from his grasp and shook my head, angry at his interruption of the stupor that held my grief at arm's length.

"Don't," I said, the first word I had spoken in days. "Don't." I dropped the sponge I was using to clean the counter and walked myself into our room. Sighing, I moved to lie down on the bed, exhausted by my grief and insomnia. Yet my grief, which I had kept at bay for these three days, now overwhelmed me. My father was dead. My dad had died in a car accident because I had called him to pick me up from the house. We were fighting about Nathan again, about how we were married too young and wouldn't last. My mother understood, my mother convinced my dad, but after she had died he couldn't see how Nathan and I would last any longer. And so once again, we were arguing about him, and my dad didn't notice the car coming at us. The driver was drunk and didn't realize he was on the wrong side of the street. And my dad couldn't get out of the way fast enough. I distracted him. I called him to pick me up, and then I distracted him. If I hadn't, my dad would still be alive.

All of a sudden, as I thought about my part in my father's death once again, I couldn't breathe. Despair enveloped my lungs and squeezed, trying to smother the life left inside me. I tried to relax, and suck in a breath, but could not. I stood up, choking on my lack of air.

I walked, rushing out of the room. Nathan saw me, and knew something was wrong. He knew I was having a panic attack, and tried to put his arms around me as he told me to breathe with him.

"Don't- touch me," I gritted out. "You- you-"

"Stop fighting me," he said firmly, gripping my body though I trashed violently for him to release me. "Just listen to me. Breathe when I breathe," he repeated. "Breathe when I breathe. Come on," he pressed my chest to his so I felt his lungs expanding. "Breathe. Breathe with me."

I obeyed him, ignoring the closeness of our bodies and focusing on my breathing. After a few minutes, it returned to normal and, closing my eyes, I leaned my forehead against his chest in exhaustion.

"Let me get you some water," he whispered, afraid to startle me. I nodded against his body before stepping back. He released his grip from around me, and I moved to sit on the couch as he returned with my water. I still felt shaky and could not pick up the glass to drink for a few more minutes.

"You're tired," Nathan stated the obvious in the soft voice he had adopted recently when speaking to me. He placed a pillow at the foot of the sofa and motioned for me to lie down. I started to protest but was too weary to continue and I moved to lie prone on the soft cushions. My husband then tucked a blanket around me as if insulating me from the hurts of the world.


	3. Of Grief and Guilt

A/N: I don't own OTH

Of Grief and Guilt

When I woke up, he was sleeping on the chair beside me. Instead of being grateful that he was here as a silent support, I was furious, believing his presence was only trying to mask his own guilt. He was acting now as if I mattered; he was acting as if he cared; he was even acting as if he loved me. But, I thought angrily, I wouldn't be fooled. No, I had been too nice to him before: allowing him to live in the home we built and he wrecked, allowing him to feel as though he was atoning for what he had done.

Silently furious, I stood. At my sudden, though quiet, movements, my husband woke, and mimicking me, stood as well. He searching eyes found my fuming gaze, but he did not seem surprised to find me so. He expected this, expected this moment when my anger at him would surface and I would once again confront what he had done.

He looked at me sadly as I walked around him to the kitchen and busied my hands by tidying up. When he called my name softly, I refused to look at him, instead placing dishes in the sick and wiping up the counter. He then dared to do something I did not expect: he called me by the nickname he had for me. He had always hated cliché nicknames like "sweetheart" or "sweetie," but somehow had latched onto simply "Hales." He hadn't referred to me by this nickname since before my accident and when he did, it received the desired effect. My head snapped to face him and my eyes searched his.

"Hales," he tried again. "Please. Let's talk."

I shook my head mutely, afraid that any words that came out of my mouth would not sound as strong as I wanted them to be.

"We need to," he persisted.

I took a deep breath, and said calmly, "Talk about what?"

Looking both relieved at my speech and afraid of what would come next, my husband ran a hand through his dark, unruly hair before saying, "Everything."

Angry at his lack of a clear direction in which to lead our conversation that he was so adamant on having, I threw down the towel I was holding to clean the counter and prepared myself for the ensuing fight. "What," I asked snippily, "What exactly do you want to talk about? Do you want me to thank you for everything you've done?"

Disconcerted at my tone, he stammered, "That's not- I just-"

"Fine," I said, walking over to the living room, "Let's talk. Was she good?" His shoulders dropped as he sighed, head tilted, asking me with his eyes not to go there. Brushing his reaction aside, I continued. "No, really. Tell me all about her. Is she pretty? Is she married, too? No, no, that's not it. Let me guess. She's a very nice woman, isn't she? She's probably never even cheated with someone else's husband before, right? The only reason she even did this- cheated- with you, was because she has had strong feelings for you that she just couldn't repress any longer." He looked shocked at my biting tone, but this only encouraged me. "This was probably the first time you two ever hooked up-"

"It was!" my husband interrupted, unable to listen to my sarcastic comments any more.

"And how am I supposed to believe that?" I asked.

"Believe me!" he cried vehemently. "I would not lie to you!"

"No." I sighed. "You'd just cheat on me."

"That's not fair, Hales. You don't even know the whole story!"

"So enlighten me. Let's hear this heart-wrenching tale."

Looking defeated by my tone, he said, "You aren't going to listen-"

"Give me one good reason why I should!"

"Because! Because I love you."

We both stood there, breathing heavy from our heated exchange, staring at each other. After a few silent moments of thought, I shook my head my head, disbelieving.

"I love you," he repeated.

This time I scoffed.

"I do, oh god, I do," he spoke desperately. "Please, I had been drinking, and-" he held up a hand to stop my inevitable protests, "and I know that's no excuse, I do. But honestly, Hales, I wasn't in my right mind. I had been on that business trip for three weeks and I missed you. We had never been apart that long before. I just, I don't know. I felt really lost. I honestly didn't know what I was doing until it was too late. I just, I missed you, and-"

"Yeah, well, I missed you, too! But I didn't just sleep with the first available piece of ass!"

"We didn't sleep together," he persisted.

I looked at him hard.

"We didn't, Hales. I stopped before it got that far-"

"Oh, how noble of you! You stopped hooking up with some skeez who isn't your wife. I'm touched."

"What do you want me to say? It happened once, and I will never do anything to hurt you ever again. I feel horrible, I do. Please just le me make this up to you. Let me help you. I want to help you!"

"Help me what?" I questioned. "Help me deal with your betrayal?"

"No," he paused, adding the next part softly. "No, help you deal with your father's death."

I stepped back as though he had slapped me. "Don't you dare mention my father."

"Look, I know it's easier for you to be mad at me than sad about him, Hales-"

"Don't you dare call me that. Stop calling me that!" I seethed, on the very verge of breaking down. "Don't. In fact, don't talk to me at all."

"You don't mean that."

"Try me," I said dangerously before turning on my heels and walking away from the life we had built together, too overwrought to do anything but sigh as I shut the door to his broken face.

A/N: Thank you for reading to those who did. I can't decide whether or not to continue, so please let me know if you are reading this story and would like more. Otherwise, I have a few other ideas that may manifest themselves into stories soon enough :) Thanks, again!


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